Years ago I enjoyed competing in Ham Radio contests.
If a Ham did well, a certificate was issued and mailed to him/her. It was normal for the recipient to fasten it to the walls of the Ham shack. It was referred to as “wallpaper” by Hams.
I never did that. I not only didn’t use them as wallpaper, I often didn’t even open the large envelope to see the certificate. I stored them and just recently came across them. I wondered what to do with them. I decided that I could add them to this website and then toss them out.
I spent hours scanning the most important ones. It was common for me to enter the same contest year after year. In one contest set a record the first year, and then I beat my own score for the next three years. That means that I have four certificates. I have included only the final year certificate.
Some certificates show the mode as CW. Literally, that means Continuous Wave. In normal speak, that means Morse Code.
A Ham may compete in one of three categories. One is called QRP, and that means very low power. The max for QRP is 5 watts. The second is low power or up to 100 watts. The highest is called High Power, which is up to 1500 watts.
Other certificates show the mode as phone. That is obviously voice. By that time, AM voice had been replaced by SSB. That stands for Single Side Band. SSB is far more efficient than AM.
Some certificates will show “single operator,” and some will show multi-operator. Sometimes I operated from another station belonging to a friend, and sometimes I invited friends to contest with me from my station.
The certificates are posted in chronological order.
This contest is well known and has Hams from every country competing.
You will see five more certificates from this same contest in later years.
The state of California is divided into sections. My station was in one section, but sometimes I would use a friend’s station in another section. This certificate shows that I used High Power and Morse Code.
This certificate is for the same contest and shows that I used High Power and SSB in a different section.
A Sprint contest is only four hours long. For some reason, I used a friend’s station. A Sprint contest is nerve-wracking, as it is short, with no time to eat or rest. I preferred the longer contests.
WPX stands for prefix. For example, my call, W6REC, is prefix W6 and W7 would be another prefix. I would never use my call, as it is too common. I used the call of a friend, NS6G. The prefix NS6 is rare, so everyone wants to contact me to get that prefix because no other NS6 prefix station was in the contest. I would spend some time working a pile-up. A pile-up is many stations calling me at the same time. When the pile-up was reduced, I would go on the hunt for new prefixes. It shows that I won first place for the 6th district (California) and 3rd in the USA in the QRP class. You can see QRP in the upper left corner of the certificate. I was quite pleased with this result.
I enjoyed the WPX contest in 1987 so much that I made a few changes. A few Ham friends formed a contest club, and we asked for and got the club call, NA6A. You can see that this resulted in more than a 250% improvement in score. Once more, this was QRP.
California is home to many of the best contestants. The goal of this contest is for the whole world to contact stations in California. Getting first place for Modoc county is automatic, as I had the only contest station in Modoc. Getting a second place for the entire state is BIG.
This was a multi-operator entry. Two friends and I won first place in the 6th district (California)
The next year’s contest and a better score. This one was single operator. I had no help through the 48 hours this time. I would only sleep a couple of hours during poor propagation. That means the middle of the night, as only the two lower bands had any activity. I had prepared food next to my operating position so as not to lose time.
To win in Modoc county would only require one contact, as there were no other contesters in Modoc. I could make only one contact and win for Modoc. Where you read about “such and such section,” Modoc is in the far northeast of CA and continues all the way down to Sacramento. That is an 8-hour drive, so you can see that some sections are huge.
The good thing about a 10-meter contest is that 10 meters is only open during the daytime from about sunrise to sunset. I was able to sleep all night long.
I loved the DX contests. As you can see, this was high-power phone. I was using an amplifier with 1500 watts of input. That is more powerful than some commercial AM radio stations use.
One of my favorite contests.
This shows that my score was #2 in California.
The sixth call area is for California and includes Alaska and Hawaii. Since little happens in those two other states, basically, it is for California. I always preferred CW of SSB (phone), so I was quite happy with the result.
Where you read about the “Sacramento section,” Modoc is in the far northeast of CA and continues all the way down to Sacramento. That is an 8-hour drive, so you can see that this section is huge.
To win this QRP (only 5 watts) means that I had good antennas. My signal often would beat out stations with medium or high power. I also used another trick. To get through a pile-up I would wait a couple of seconds to send my call. The station was often unable to copy a call sign with so many stations on top of each other. As they all finished, I would send my much weaker (QRP) call, and since it was in the clear, I would get the contact. Those much stronger stations had to wait and try again. This always put a smile on my face.
To win in the large Sacramento Valley Section was very nice, but to earn 9th place for all of the USA and Canada was a huge surprise.
While my station was used for this contest, the two operators, S51EA and S57AW, were two friends from Slovenia. They were visiting the US, and I had invited them to stay with me and operate this contest. They did the majority of the contesting, and I mostly made sure that they didn’t lose time changing bands and antennas in a station about which they knew nothing.
To earn sixth place in the US and Canada was very surprising to all of us. I made copies of this certificate and mailed them to both operators.
Another fun contest.
QRP is always a challenge. 3.7 MHz is what we call 80 meters. DX means long distance, which is stations out of the US. 80 meters is only open for long distance from early evening through early morning. That is about 12 hours of propagation to distant countries. I had little competition because few would bother with trying to contact long distance with only 5 watts. It paid off as the result was #1 in the world. Had I used higher power, it would have been much harder to achieve #1 in the world.
This one was much easier than the above contest because CW gets through much better than SSB (voice). I used a two-element wire loop antenna and also a vertically mounted one in the center of my workshop, which had a metal roof. I would switch back and forth to see which was better.
I was so pleased with the result from the year before (see above) that I entered this contest again. It paid off again.
Updated 30 March 2023